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Wednesday, February 24, 2016

After starting this blog in 2013, many things have changed. During the years, we have grown bigger, we have participated in more and more projects, and we have become more conscious about our aims. At this point, we feel the need for renewal. We will no longer use this blog, but check out our new TACT blog at https://tactcity.wordpress.com/blog/. Visit us and follow us!

Monday, February 8, 2016

Urban History Association 2016 Conference

We’re seeking two panelists for a session on citizen engagement in planning and re-imagining the city at UHA 2016. Our papers look at citizen-led attempts to promote new visions of two Canadian cities—Montréal and Toronto—in the 1960s and 1970s. Both were rooted in a period of change in municipal politics; both were influential at the level of ideas but experienced significant obstacles to implementation.

In keeping with the conference theme of “the working urban,” the panel will explore these and other examples of citizens working out alternative urban futures. What other historical contexts have been receptive to citizen-led urbanisms? What visions of the city have been promoted in the name of participatory democracy, and what has their relation been to government and urban expertise? What strategies—appeals to rights, personal influence, creation of new mechanisms of consultation— have citizens used to promote their visions of the urban future?

Valérie Poirier (Université du Québec à Montréal) will present a paper examining the Citizens’ Commission on the Future of Montreal, set up at the instigation of the heritage group Save Montreal in 1976-1977.

Daniel Ross (York University) will present on Toronto’s citizen-led Central Area Plan (1976) and the larger debates over development and the future of downtown that gave rise to it.

To encourage a comparative discussion we welcome papers dealing with other time periods and regions. Also happy to discuss joining or merging with another panel on a similar topic. Please submit abstracts to Daniel Ross (dgratyork@gmail.com) and Valérie Poirier (valerie.poirier1@gmail.com) by February 15th (sooner if possible!).

Friday, January 22, 2016

Please find below our call for innovative cases of Community-Led Urban Development. With the call we collect good practices of community-led real estate development, new economic models of building, renovating or running community spaces and maintaining the commons. The selected initiatives will be part of our upcoming book and will be invited to workshops held this Spring in Budapest, Madrid, Rome and Rotterdam, to engage in a Europe-wide exchange around civic economy and spatial development.

We would be happy if you could spread the call among your colleagues and the initiatives in (and beyond) for whom it could be interesting. Please find here a link to the call: http://eutropian.org/share-your-story/

We are looking for stories about the economic organisation of community spaces (including social centers, cooperative businesses, co-working spaces, cultural venues in storefronts, buildings or open areas) developed and run by citizens with a social-cultural impact on their neighbourhood. Send us your story, describing the economic and organisation model, funding and human resources and development process of your space. Join us at our upcoming workshops and help other initiatives to learn from you!

“Funding the Cooperative City” explores, promotes and assists experiments in community-led real estate development in European cities. Through workshops (Rotterdam, Berlin and Paris in 2014 and Budapest, Madrid, Rome and Rotterdam in 2016) as well as investigative reports, video portraits and a publication, the project brings together protagonists from various cities to help shaping a new European culture of urban development based on community-driven initiatives, civic economic models and cooperative ownership.

For more info about the Funding the Cooperative City series, please visit

Urban History Association Conference (Chicago, 13–16 October 2016)

Comment: Prof. Jon C. Teaford (History, Purdue University)

Scholars are well aware of the geographic problem of defining the city as an object of analysis. Research on urban topics often begins by defining what exactly is meant by the city at hand: a municipality defined by administrative jurisdiction, a Standard Metropolitan Statistical Area defined by commuter and economic circulation, a bio-ecological region defined by metabolic interactions, or something else entirely.

However, the challenge of determining the city's edges is not just a descriptive and interpretive problem. It is also a problem with its own history, the subject of considerable contestation as cities have grown, shrunk, and transformed across different temporal and geographic contexts. Historical debates over the city’s physical extent can therefore best be understood as carriers of politics, ideology, and power, rather than as the dispassionate products of empirical analysis.

This panel seeks to explore historical accounts of cases in which definitions of the geographic limits of cities (both specific cities and cities in general) have been deployed in the service of ideological aims—whether radical, reformist, or reactionary. What are the different political, social, cultural, and intellectual interests that have motivated such attempts to conceive of a city beyond the simple lines of the city limits? How can historical debates about urban borders offer new perspectives on developments such as suburbanization, metropolitan fragmentation, and regional governance? What broader currents in cultural and political history can we detect in discussions of cities’ boundaries?

We welcome papers that take a historical approach to such themes as annexation; metropolitan institution building; regionalism; core-periphery relations; the politics of federalism; theories of "global urbanism"; transportation, housing, and parks planning; the production of statistics and geographic data; mapping and representation; centralization and decentralization; metropolitan administration; and other topics.

Monday, January 18, 2016

We are looking for stories about the economic organisation of spaces like storefronts, buildings or open areas, developed and run by citizens with a social-cultural impact on their neighbourhood. Send us your story, describing the economic and organisation model, funding and human resources and development process of your space. Join us at our upcoming workshops and help other initiatives to learn from you!

“Funding the Cooperative City” explores, promotes and assists experiments in community-led real estate development in European cities. Through workshops (Rotterdam, Berlin and Paris in 2014 and Budapest, Madrid, Rome and Rotterdam in 2016) as well as investigative reports, video portraits and a publication, the project brings together protagonists from various cities to help shaping a new European culture of urban development based on community-driven initiatives, civic economic models and cooperative ownership. For more info about the Funding the Cooperative City series, visit http://eutropian.org/funding-the-cooperative-city/

Sunday, January 17, 2016

Located
15 km from Turin, in the center of Piedmont, a region internationally
known for prestigious wine (such as Barbera, Moscato, Barolo and many
others) and the slow food concept, one hour by train from Milan, two
hours from the town of Genoa, in Liguria, and only an hour and a half by
plane from Paris, Gassino Torinese is characterized by a medieval
historic center waiting for a new reuse, because of its geographical
position: in fact, Gassino Torinese acts as a barycenter for the
settlements along the river Po, in the stretch between San Mauro
Torinese and Chivasso.

The summer
school's design themes will focus on the renovation, reuse and
re-utilization of old and valuable buildings located in this region to
be transformed in strategic places to be integrated into a contemporary
territorial context to create a smart, opensource system of cities, that
makes everything circular: it will be a territory of the hybrid and of
former structures to be transformed into poles for the creation of a
network of public transport and social exchanges today nonexistent.
Projects to connect former factories, former bus and tramway stations,
former agriculture structures and former other things, are the main
goals of the projects developed by the participants during the two-week
workshop.

Period: From July 18 to 30, 2016.

Eligibility:
Gassino Summer School is open to a maximum of 25 participants, students
or graduates in architecture (Bachelor or Master), Ph.D. students and
architects less than thirty years old on July 30, 2016. These 25
participants will be selected through the evaluation of portfolios and
curriculum vitae by a scientific committee.

Tuesday, January 5, 2016

We are delighted to announce the next Summer Institute in Urban
Studies (SIUS 16). The event will take place at the University of
Manchester from the evening of Sunday 26 June to the evening of 30 June
2016 and the application process is now open.

SIUS 16 provides an
opportunity to investigate leading-edge theoretical and methodological
questions, along with a range of associated career development issues,
in the field of urban studies. The Institute will feature contributions
from internationally renowned figures in urban studies, from inside and
outside of Manchester.

Format

Open to doctoral students (usually post-fieldwork), postdoctoral
researchers, and recently appointed faculty/lecturers (normally within
three years of first continuing appointment), the Institute comprises an
intensive, week-long programme of activities.

It is designed to provide participants with an in-depth understanding
of the innovatory developments and enduring controversies in urban
studies, as well as mentoring and support in the different aspects of
the academic labour process - from applying for grants to designing
courses, from editing books and special issues of journals to writing
book proposals, and from publishing in journals to working at the
academic/non-academic interface. It will consist of panels, lectures and
reading groups with participants involved in shaping the final
programme.

Fees

The fee for the Institute is £275 GBP. This amount covers the
organisational costs and includes accommodation for five nights (26 June
to 1 July inclusive), a welcome reception (26 June), a walking tour,
lunches, and an institute dinner (29 June).

Scholarships

Funding from the University of Manchester allows us to offer three
scholarships to those attending from countries classified as B or C by
the ISA. Scholarships will cover the cost of travel and the £275
Institute registration fee. The scholarships will not cover daily
subsistence expenses (meals, local transportation costs etc.).